Talking About the Weather

Weather and climate change seems to fit with the human psyche very well. It is much to do with the cycle of life and people can relate positively or negatively depending on their disposition or enthusiasm. I personally enjoy the capricious nature of weather or climate and the stormier the storm, the more exciting it is.

This Northern Hemisphere winter, I like a good many people were interested in the decadal (plus a year or two) La Nina in conjunction with a low solar activity and how this might affect this particular weather/climate season. Some of the experts out there have projected for previous winters, some sort of warm sogginess that would represent a tropic monsoon. Judah Cohen working with MIT has worked out this forcast for the United States:

While I take exception to the vagueness of this “anomaly” measurement, this graph/depiction is actually a very well known behavior of a La Niña cycle. This is not extraordinary forecasting.

Currently, the weather for the West Coast is quite wet and cool, which is close on the forecast model. The curiosity is the layout of current conditions and conditions of December. As of now, we are looking at a pattern for the first two weeks of January 2011 that looks like this:

Unless March plans a late game come back, I am not seeing where this model is taking into consideration oceanic conditions that appears to

heavily influence the US weather patterns. Barrow Alaska seems to be enjoying temperatures 1 degree above freezing, but no other US region appears to be enjoying these toasty influxes.

An amusing 25-30% of the country appears to be enjoying a -4 degree anomaly of global climate disruption. This pattern is the same for most of Europe and Siberia as well.

As for the Precipitation Forecast, it is equal copy-and-paste of the La Niña tenancies, but is lacking in skill.

Here we have a typical forecast of a La Niña coming out of a El Niño. Again, there is no accounting for the rapid drop in the ocean conditions this fall bringing us to this decadal characteristic of weather.

The Southwest is still holding on to the “drought-like” conditions, but Florida may need an update. Snow-pack continues to build in California:

Finding anything that shows anything interesting in the skill of forecasting by Judah Cohen is something to be